--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Also participating was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Henry H. Shelton; Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) Victoria Clarke; and Assistant Secretary of Defense (Force Management Policy) Charles S. Abell.)
Rumsfeld: Good afternoon. I want to take the opportunity today to recognize the service and sacrifice of those who have been injured or killed in the September 11th attacks.
The president, of course, has made clear that the attacks were not just acts of terror. They were acts of war, military strikes against the United States of America. As such, those Department of Defense employees who were injured or killed were not just victims of terror. They were combat casualties, brave men and women who risked their lives to safeguard our freedom. And they paid for our liberty with their lives.
Because we want to recognize them and their sacrifices, we're announcing today that the members of the armed forces that were killed or injured in the September 11th attack on the Pentagon and on the World Trade Center towers will receive the Purple Heart. As you know, the Purple Heart is given to those killed or wounded in combat.
For most of our history, combat has been something that has been largely taken place on foreign soil. These strikes were the first on American soil since the Second World War, and the first attack on our capital by a foreign enemy since the War of 1812. These assaults have brought the battlefield home to us. As a result, a large number of DoD civilians gave their lives in combat. Their sacrifice also requires recognition. So today, we are also announcing the establishment of a new decoration for Department of Defense civilians: the Secretary of Defense Medal for the Defense of Freedom. This medal is the civilian equivalent of the Purple Heart. It will be awarded to DoD civilian employees who are killed or wounded by hostile action while serving in support of the department. The standards for eligibility will be closely modeled on those of the Purple Heart.
The establishment of this decoration is a fitting honor and a tribute to the extraordinary dedication and service of the department's civilian workforce. It's also a recognition that the world has changed; that we can no longer count on future wars being waged safely in their regions of origin. I have every confidence that our armed forces and all the dedicated men and women of the Department of Defense are ready to meet the challenges ahead.
Mr. Charlie Abell is here to respond to questions on the medals, and will be available after I take the opportunity to introduce my friend, General Hugh Shelton. It has been my privilege to serve with him these past months and to have his very wise counsel on many, many occasions, but particularly as we prepare the campaign ahead. He has been instrumental in helping to develop our new defense strategy, the new force-sizing construct, and the Defense Planning Guidance, which will move us -- our forces into the 21st century.
We will have a formal ceremony for General Shelton, as I'm sure you're aware. And I've already had the pleasure of hosting a dinner, farewell dinner, for him and the chiefs some days ago. But we did think it was appropriate to have him come down and say a few words to this gathering.
General, America is grateful for your dedication and your service. You will be missed by the department, and certainly by me.
Shelton: Well, thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.
And ladies and gentlemen, I am very pleased today to join the secretary for the announcement of the creation of the award of the Freedom Medal to our civilians who were killed and injured on September 11th, and to announce the award of the Purple Heart to the members of our military family.
I want to again extend my condolences to the families and friends who lost loved ones at the Pentagon, at the World Trade Center, and in Pennsylvania. While the names of the victims here -- those that were killed in the Pentagon -- may not be known to you, make no mistake, the work that they did was essential for our mission, and they leave a legacy of service for our nation. We are forever grateful. So it's fitting that we recognize their courage, their dedication to duty, and their ultimate sacrifice for their nation.
I also want to thank Secretary Rumsfeld for his very kind words this morning. It has been truly an honor and a privilege to be a member of his defense team. But all good things must come to an end, and it is time to say goodbye.
I'm going to leave the chairmanship on the 30th, so I'd like to take this last opportunity to commend each of you for the great job that you do in covering the Pentagon and in covering the Department of Defense. You share with us, the civilian and military leadership, the great responsibility of keeping the great citizens of our wonderful nation informed.
Finally, I want to say that there is no greater job or one that carries any greater responsibility than to represent the great young men and women that serve our nation in uniform. They are our best, and they are our brightest. I've seen it many times over the last four years. And during my tenure, our military has been involved in some 34 operations. Whatever we ask of them, they perform superbly.
Soon we are going to ask them to take on a tremendous responsibility as they embark on one of the most difficult missions that the military has ever been given. It will require every bit of their courage, their intellect, and their warrior spirit to hunt down and destroy the groups that are the enemies of the civilized world. And I leave this job confident that your armed forces, along with our partners, our friends, and our allies, are up to this challenge.
One of the reasons that I'm very confident of that is the fact that General Dick Myers is the right man for the chairmanship at this time. I think our armed forces are very fortunate to have Dick coming forward to lead them as we face the future.
Mr. Secretary, thank you again for having me here today. And let me once again thank this great group of professionals that are here in front of us today, many of whom I consider to be personal friends as well as great professional acquaintances, for the great job that you do in keeping our American public informed in a professional and in a responsible manner. Again, thank you, and we'll be happy to take your questions.
Q: Mr. Secretary, could I ask -- NORAD has confirmed that mid-level generals in NORAD have been empowered to authorize the shoot- down of a civilian airliner in an extreme emergency, if it was approaching a possible U.S. target. Number one, could you tell us what kinds of safeguards have been put on that so that there wouldn't be a mistake? And number two, say the president wasn't available to issue such an order. Would the order then go down to the command authority, to the vice president, to you, to General Shelton before it got to these generals?
Rumsfeld: Since there has been some discussion about rules of engagement, I'll make a few comments about it, although the normal procedure is to not get into that subject in any detail. The first thing I would say is that there are rules of engagement -- a number of types of rules of engagement. It is not one set of rules of engagement, and they vary from circumstance to circumstance and from time to time and depending on the situation. If you think about it, almost always, rules of engagement in our history have been with a full appreciation of the fact that an individual service member's life might be at risk, that in fact they needed the ability of self- defense. So rules of engagement were fashioned, have been historically fashioned, when a uniformed service member is at risk, to allow a degree of leeway for them to protect themselves and to protect the people and the installations that they're there to protect.
The situation that occurred on the 11th was quite the opposite. The people in the armed services were not at risk. It was the people in the aircraft that were at risk. And as a result, one has to recognize that there is not the need to give a relatively long or large degree of flexibility to an individual to defend themselves because they weren't being put at risk. So we had -- it was a reverse situation, really.
And what happened was that General Shelton and I sat down and fashioned rules of engagement that we believed were appropriate, communicated with the CINCs that were involved, and provided them to the president with our recommendation, which he accepted.
Rules of engagement in these cases tend to do down the chain of command. And the chain of command is from the president to the secretary of Defense and then to a -- generally a CINC, a combatant commander somewhere in the world. There are times when the situation is sufficiently immediate that the authority is delegated below the CINC for periods of time, but always, in a case like this, always with the understanding that if time permits, it would be immediately brought up to the CINC, and then to me, and if time still permits, for me to go to the president.
I think that pretty well covers the subject.
Q: Realizing that minutes, perhaps seconds could be at stake here, many lives could be at stake. For instance, a plane taking off from Dulles and diverted. Could you ensure the American public that stringent safeguards are being put on this to make sure there are no mistakes?
Rumsfeld: Absolutely, there certainly are -- every care in the world. Not only are rules of engagement provided along the lines that I said, but then guidance and instruction is given as to the kind of behavior that is expected, in this case of a pilot, for example. Prior to making any judgment, every effort is made to dissuade an airplane to go into any area that's prohibited, for example. And there are all kinds of ways that that's done. It's done through radio communications, it's done through hand signals, it's done through flying in front of an airplane. So there's all kinds of things that are done in advance, as well as checking various IFF procedures to see if there's an abnormal signal. There are a lot of safeguards in place.
The situation, as you point out, in some instances things can happen quite fast. I was called any number of times during the period when those rules of engagement were in place, and had a number of conversations with the president during that period, as well. And I think that's probably all I want to do with that.
(Cross talk.)
Q: Excuse me. I think the American -- the flying public of America might want just a little more in the way of reassurance. As you've noted, everything has changed since September 11th. It's hard to imagine, for instance, a hijacking now taking place in which the passengers take it sitting down.
If there's a scenario -- and this is something that somebody has to think about as they get on a plane. If there's a scenario where a plane has been hijacked, the passengers are trying to overpower the hijackers and get control of the plane, what reassurance do they have that they're not going to be shot out of the sky while that's going on?
Rumsfeld: No planes were shot at, let alone shot down, during that period.
Q: But I'm talking after these new rules of engagement that you put in place.
Rumsfeld: The rules of engagement are addressed on a continuing basis with a great deal of care and sensitivity to all of the points that you've raised, and others have raised. And I can assure you that they are under continuous review and given the carefullest consideration. And it seems to me that is the same kind of assurance that the American people get with respect to a lot of things that the Defense Department is involved in.
Q: Mr. Secretary, can I just follow on that tack for a moment? But before I do, I would like to respond to General Shelton's remarks, and say that I think many of us are proud to consider him a personal friend, and I hope you don't just fade away, General.
Shelton: Thank you very much.
Q: Anyway, Mr. Secretary, under the rules of engagement, as they have been throughout my knowledge of the military, it goes down the chain of command, but it goes down all the way. And in the worst- case scenario, if a pilot flying an F-15 or an F-16 saw a plane -- commercial airliner -- heading for the White House, he has the authority to shoot it down if he can't raise anybody else and has no time, doesn't he?
Rumsfeld: I'm not going to get into the details of the rules of engagement beyond what I've provided, and I think I've given you a very good sense of the fact that they're appropriate to a situation where the military does not have to defend themselves. Therefore it does not have to be delegated down very far. It can be kept quite close to a very senior level.
Q: Mr. Secretary, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz yesterday said, with regard to the campaign against terrorism, that -- he said everybody who's waiting for military action needs to rethink this thing. Are we to take from that -- and could you elaborate -- that in fact military action is not imminent?
Rumsfeld: I'm -- needless to say, I'm not going to describe the timetables that we're thinking about for any aspect of this effort.
Q: Question for General Shelton. General, you said a moment ago that you were confident that America would succeed in its mission against these terrorists. Is current intelligence sufficient enough -- the intelligence being provided our armed forces -- for them to be able to locate and root out these terrorist cells, not only in Afghanistan, but around the world?
Shelton: Jim, first of all, let me say that this is going to be, as the secretary mentioned -- this will be a multifaceted, multidimensional campaign. It will be -- the military is one part of an overall campaign against terrorism worldwide. The al Qaeda organization happens to be a priority right now simply because it's -- I think, clear knowledge that they were involved in both the World Trade Center as well as the Pentagon.
But intelligence will be key. There is no question about it. And I am confident in our intelligence community's ability to focus its efforts and to go against these terrorist organizations.
Again, this is something that has been ongoing. It's not something we're starting today. And there have been some great successes in that area over the last two to three years. It is being -- it is being increased at this time. But it is not just starting from a cold start. And so I am confident that we will have the wherewithal, both in the intelligence as well as in all the other dimensions of the campaign, to root out and eliminate the organizations that we focus on. And we're being helped in this case by our partners and by our allies and friends around the world. And so it's the civilized world against the terrorist world, and that includes friends that are in the Gulf region, friends that are in the Pacific and so forth. And so I think that we've got, without a doubt, the ability to go after these organizations and to achieve a victory.
Q: So are you saying that it wasn't necessarily lack of intelligence but perhaps lack of will on that part of maybe some of our allies, even the United States, to go after these terrorists?
Shelton: In terms of what, Jim.
Q: You were saying that we're not -- we don't have a cold start. There's already intelligence out there. Well, why then wasn't it used previously? Are you saying that --
Shelton: Oh, it has been. It has been. This has been ongoing campaign. There have been a lot of successes. And one of the things about a campaign of this nature is that there will be a tremendous amount that is done that will never be visible because of the type of a foe that you face. We have the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, a lot of elements of this government that have had successes and will continue to have increased successes with the increased assistance, I think, that we're finding. The whole world recognized the barbaric act that was carried out here, and it wasn't related to anything but an attack against the civilized world. I mean, if you look at the number of people that were killed in the World Trade Center from the various nations, it was against everyone. And so those nations have joined in the fight, and I think that will help us all in the ongoing campaign.
Rumsfeld: Could I say a word about the rules of engagement to further elaborate on your question, because I think it is an important question, and there's two aspects that I failed to mention. First, the rules of engagement ought to be thought of in this way, that Americans can have a high degree of certainty, it seems to me: the president, the secretary of Defense and the combatant commanders are never more than a minute or two away from a secure phone. And I was called numerous times during the period on and after September 11th, up through recent periods about concerns, questions about what various aircraft might be doing in various locations of the world and in this area. And it is a process that works. Very, very senior people are able to address a matter in real time and ask the right questions and make the right judgments. And it seems to me that that ought to be an assistance, with respect to assurance, that those calls still come in at all hours of day and night, as I can say.
Q: Sir?
Rumsfeld: Yes?
Q: The rules of engagement are one part of it, but the reason that the fighters that were scrambled on September 11th never got a shot off is because it took them about six minutes to get up in the air, and by then it was too late. Does the suggestion that the Air Force now has this authority mean that combat air patrols will continue, or will even increase, over major American cities?
Rumsfeld: We have made a number of adjustments in the combat air patrols. In some instances, we've provided combat air patrols for various particularized situations. We have tended to provide it in the Washington, D.C. area and the New York area, during this period, as I've announced previously. We do have aircraft on strip alert at any number of places around the country. And -- but we have, because of the stress on the force, and because of the nature of the threat evolved, we have altered that from time to time, and we will continue to do so.
The last thing I would say about the rules of engagement is that to the -- I'm sure you all appreciate this very well -- but to the extent one becomes exceedingly precise about what the rules of engagement are, it does provide assistance to those individuals who would attempt to use those rules of engagement to their advantage to bring damage and harm to the United States, which is why we have a standing rule here to not get into the details about exactly what they are and what the procedures are. And I think it's a good practice and a good policy.
Q: Mr. Secretary, from time to time you've had fly-bys, close encounters here at home and with military forces deployed around the world with aircraft of uncertain intent flying into restricted areas -- around military people, threatening them, or perhaps potentially threatening them. Are there new rules of engagement in those instances as well, over military installations in this country?
Rumsfeld: Well, I think the events of the 11th obviously create a greater sensitivity about certain types of installations and activities. And as intelligence information is reviewed and judgments are made as to the validity of it or possible validity of the intelligence information, we then of course might shift our focus and be more attentive to or more concerned about different types of things.
So it is -- one size does not fit all in this case.
Q: Does the military have a new mission or a new role to play in enforcement of restricted airspace over various parts of the United States that it didn't have before September 11? And can you elaborate on that at all?
Rumsfeld: Well, I mean, if you stop and think about it, the thought of anyone suggesting that the Department of Defense ought to have fighter aircraft in the air prepared to shoot at an American airliner is just beyond -- almost beyond belief. And so the answer to your question is, you bet. To the extent that we have aircraft up or on alert today, their assignment is a distinctively different one from the kinds of assignments that we have expected the Department of Defense to be engaged in, which have always tended to look out, not in. And it is a different situation.
Q: Will there be CAP over NFL football and the World Series, perhaps?
Rumsfeld: Oh, I'm not going to get into that kind of thing.
Q: Secretary, looking ahead on your military revamping, how important is it now to go forward with the military revamping, particularly given this attack? And also, your opinion as well as the general's.
Rumsfeld: Sure. In my view, if anything, this unusual and to be sure asymmetric attack that's taken place and the ones that we anticipate focuses attention on the transformation that we've been embarked on and the concern that all of us have expressed about the variety of asymmetrical threats running from terrorism to cruise missile threats to ballistic missiles to cyber-attacks. And I think that it is exceedingly important that we go forward and see that we're arranged and have the kind of flexibility to do those things that are necessary to help provide for the defense of our country and the defense of our way of life.
General?
Shelton: I certainly would just underscore what the secretary said and say that this has been a process that has involved the Joint Chiefs and the services, and that I think you'll see, when it comes out, that it does address these -- we went back and reviewed to see if we had -- if we had adequate attention paid to it in terms of homeland defense or homeland security, and the general consensus is is that it is, and that it was addressed.
We've got work to do; we've known that. But you know, we were looking at homeland security even prior to this previous QDR and had a plan to evolve into a command to help the lead federal agencies in this area. And so we think it's on mark and moving in the right direction for sure.
Q: General? General, you've described that the war on terror has actually been going on for some time, that there have been successes of the CIA and the FBI. But can you tell us what has changed in terms of the military's role in supporting those agencies or working with those agencies? What has really changed as of September 11th?
Shelton: Let me -- before I address that, let me go back to rules of engagement just one second, because I think it's important that everyone understands.
We have got a great Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Army -- but specifically the pilots that fly. They are bright, they are dedicated, and they are very, very good. They're the best in the world. The last thing in the world that one of them wants to do is engage a commercial aircraft. And so, don't get the impression that anyone that is flying around out there has a loose trigger finger. That's not the case.
My concern is that -- is exactly the opposite, that we will in fact, because of wanting to make very, very sure -- you know some of these time lines could be very short, before -- and so, I'd be concerned the other way. I don't think our American citizens have to be concerned about the things that we are doing right now to protect the American citizens. All of these pilots that fly these aircraft were sworn to uphold and protect the great citizens of this nation, and it's not in their makeup to want to go out and shoot at anything that could possibly hurt one of our own civilians.
Now let me go back to the question on terrorism. I wouldn't say that an awful lot of -- we've got great capabilities right now, but we are focusing that effort in a way that we haven't focused it in the past. And so the combination again, of a multifaceted, multidimensional type of a campaign, I think, will prove to be even more effective than the one that we've waged for the last couple of years.
Q: General, in terms of military planning, when you talk about your confidence in the ability of U.S. forces to hunt down and destroy these enemies of civilization, there's a term of art called center of gravity, that you're well aware of. Has the military identified the, quote, "center of gravity" for al Qaeda and the Taliban sufficiently that you know, if you apply a sufficient amount of military force, you'll be able to accomplish your mission?
Shelton: Tony, I -- you know, let me go back. It is a multidimensional -- it is a governmental effort right now, and we have a lot of elements of our government that, as President Bush has said so correctly, that if we apply all of that, we'll stand a much better chance of defeating an enemy than you will if you approach it with a single effort.
Some of the elements of terrorism are best defeated by some of our law enforcement agencies, the Central Intelligence Agency, economic tools can come into play. You have to put it all together. And I am very -- as a military individual, I am very happy with what I see at the interagency approach to the campaign against terrorism. And that'll make it considerably more effective than just trying to use one tool that's in the kit bag, which is your military.
Q: What can that -- what can that tool though accomplish that the FBI or going after their bank accounts can't?
Shelton: We know what their centers of gravity are. Some of those can be attacked by the other elements of our government. Some could be attacked by us. To tell the enemy that I've identified your center of gravity is not something I want to stand here and do. Thank you.
Q: You've identified it though? There are centers of gravity the military can influence?
Shelton: There are centers of gravity the military can have an influence on, and along with the others, we'll be using all of those tools to go after the organizations. And I say organizations because its not just one organization, it's many organizations.
Q: Mr. Secretary, following up briefly on Bob's earlier question about timing, which you've made clear you're not going to answer -- (laughter) -- would it be -- would it be -- would it be safe to say --would it be safe to say that military force for the time being is taking a back seat to diplomacy and coalition-building?
Rumsfeld: Since we're not willing to discuss it, then it would not probably be safe to say anything.
Q: Mr. Secretary.
Rumsfeld: Yes.
Q: You and the president have said that this is a declared war on terrorism, yet there are some things that the United States does when there is a declaration of war, things that people in uniform get by way of compensation and by way of national defense service medals, so on and so forth, that haven't kicked in yet. And there are people in uniform who are starting to ask even reporters what kind of war is this if we have to go all out, if we have to go into harm's way, yet these things that happen in time of war haven't happened yet?
Rumsfeld: That's true, because it's a distinctly different type of a campaign or effort. And as we move through it, we will be addressing those types of things. I mean, there are any number of other things that happen in terms of lines of responsibilities change, and in some instances we've addressed that and decided not to alter lines of responsibility because we think that they're -- probably for this circumstance, they're better the way they are. There are any number of things we're reviewing and in numerous -- as General Shelton said, numerous inter-agency processes.
Q: So it sounds like we're creeping into a state of war rather than jumping into a state of war.
Rumsfeld: Well, to characterize the administration's approach as measured I think would be correct. It is. We are determined to try to do this right, to put in place the capabilities and the architectures and the process that will enable us to proceed in an orderly way over a sustained period of time. We're trying to help the world understand what it is this is about, and it's new for them as well. And my impression is that you're right, we're not leaping into this, we're moving into it in a measured way.
(Cross talk.)
Rumsfeld: Excuse me, just --
Shelton: If I could just add to that, Mr. Secretary, I -- from a military standpoint, you know, it is very easy, when you're faced with a crisis, to default automatically to the military, because we can move fast and we can do things that will show up well in the television or in a newspaper. On the other hand, if you really want to be effective, you have to understand that in some situations, such as the one that this country's faced with now, we have a lot of tools, and we'll be much more effective if we bring it all together and apply it at the enemy's center of gravity, to use Tony's words, as a multifaceted, multidimensional, because that's what it's going to take over time. And so not overreacting and going after it with just the military, in my military opinion, is the right way to do it.
Q: So you're saying that bouncing the soil, dropping bombs at an inappropriate time can have a terribly negative impact on your overall goal? Is that what you're saying?
Shelton: I think that what I am saying the effectiveness of a campaign against terrorism is best when you use all the tools available to you at the appropriate time and at the appropriate place. And that's what this government plans to do.
Q: General Shelton, do you feel any personal frustration --
Rumsfeld: We'll make this the last question, and then -- for us. And then we're going to slip away, and then Charlie Abell is here who can respond to questions on the medal.
Q: Do you feel a personal frustration that you're not going to be here to see this through to the end? This happened on your watch.
Shelton: I guess the analogy that I would use is I feel like the quarterback of a football team that went out on the field, and he's behind by one touchdown, but he knows his team's going to come through and win. But you're in the first quarter and all of a sudden the coach sends a player out to tell you your eligibility just expired. (Laughter.) And, you know, I'd probably break down in tears, except that as I look over at the bench, I see an all-American quarterback that's suiting up getting ready to come in, and his name is Dick Myers. And he, along with the team, will go on to victory. So I feel very good about that.
Q: Not Jeff George! (Laughter.)
Shelton: Thanks very much to all of you. God bless you. Thank you. (Applause.)
Rumsfeld: Charlie, do you want to --
Clarke: Charlie, just give me one second. (Off mike.)
(Cross talk.)
Clarke: Yeah, we do. Yeah.
Charlie's going to step up, but I just wanted to take a couple of minutes to talk about something, and it's really a request to you all.
There has been a lot of discussion lately, as there should be, about how are we going to work with you all in covering what the secretary and General Shelton have repeatedly said is a very different kind of war. I've had lots of individual conversations, so has Admiral Quigley, so have most of the people on my team, and encourage more of those as we try to figure out these rules of the road. We're meeting with the bureau chiefs tomorrow. We want to set up more meetings along those lines.
The secretary talked about this last week from the podium, I think. It's a very different war. We're looking to the past to try to learn some lessons about how we do this, but we need your help. We need your suggestions. We need your ideas. So, if we haven't found you, please come find us. Write us, e-mail us, call us. We're thinking about all sorts of meetings on an ongoing basis, and I really mean on an ongoing basis. As we get things underway, some things might work, some things might not.
But this is a real appeal to you all to help us on this, and I just want to make sure you know what our commitment, and that is, to put out as much information as we possibly can -- to you guys, to the American people, to the world -- about what it is we're trying to accomplish. It will be very challenging for all the obvious reasons, but this is an appeal to you guys that this is a collaborative effort with you all.
So with that, I'll turn it over to Charlie.
Abell: Why don't I --
(Cross talk.)
Abell: Okay.
Q: I think first question would be is, does this include not only people who were hurt or killed in the accident here, but whether those who might been aboard airliners that crashed into the World Trade Center -- military or civilian employees of the Defense Department aboard those airliners that crashed elsewhere?
Abell: Certainly.
Q: And do you have any idea how -- the number of people this might involve initially ?
Abell: I have some numbers. There have been numbers released. I would caution you about those numbers in that there are certainly both military and civilian personnel who were injured who reported to a medical facility -- either a military facility or a civilian hospital, were patched up and returned to their duty station. And we may not know all of those people yet. We're actively seeking them, so whether -- I don't believe that I have a number that won't change. But right now, the number I have for Department of Defense civilian employees is 90. But I say, I don't promise that that number won't change.
Q: But those would include -- I'm sorry, those 90 would include not just the ones here, but --
Abell: Not just here.
Q: -- aboard the other airliners?
Abell: Or on duty, performing some duty for the Department of Defense in the World Trade Center, perhaps, as well.
Q: And the military? How many Purple Hearts will you give?
Abell: I don't have that number. I haven't asked the services for -- to provide that data to me.
Q: Sir?
Q: Two questions, just to clarify a couple of things. One is, is there any criteria for the extent of injury that has to be suffered, or is that left up to the individual to decide if the scratch he got or whether he sustained a serious injury -- is there any criteria for that?
Abell: It says a serious injury. It parallels, as the secretary said, the Purple Heart. As you're well aware, over time, the definition of the injury for which one might qualify -- for a military member to qualify for a Purple Heart has been clarified to include a serious injury -- not a scratch, not a bump on the head.
Q: Does this declaration essentially that these people were injured in an act of war, does it have some other ramifications in terms of, for instance, life insurance policies paying off or that sort of thing? Many policies used to include, you know, exemptions for acts of war, for instance. Have you looked at all whether there's some unintended consequence here that could result in people losing some benefits or something?
Abell: Well let me be clear. The Defense of Freedom Medal is the civilian equivalent to the Purple Heart, and the criteria is that you were killed or wounded while on duty in support of the Department of Defense as a result of a hostile action. It does not need a war --
Q: Secretary Rumsfeld came out and said pretty clearly that the reason for this was that this was an act of war.
Abell: I understand --
Q: So I was just curious whether that's been examined at all, or whether that's an issue. Or maybe it's a non-issue. I don't know.
Abell: It's not an issue that I'm prepared to talk about today. I'm here to talk about the Defense of Freedom Medal.
Q: For those of us who are new here, could you please identify yourself?
Abell: Yes. My name is Charlie Abell, A-B-E-L-L. I'm the assistant secretary of Defense for Force Management Policy.
Yes, ma'am?
Q: There's legislation on the Hill to give the Purple -- to make the Purple Heart applicable to civilians in the armed forces. Are you going to ask them to withdraw that? Are you going to recommend a veto of it? Or is this a stop-gap measure until that comes through?
Abell: We have and are continuing to have conversations with lawmakers and their staffs. And this is the medal that we have designed and the secretary has approved to be the civilian equivalent of the Purple Heart. And I would hope that our lawmakers would find this acceptable, and the initial indications that I have are that they do.
Q: Can you give us any more timing on when these should be available?
Abell: The manufacturer has been very cooperative. We hope to have the first delivery of a limited number of the medals sometime next week, and we expect to be able then to engrave the back. If you look at the picture, it has an area for the name to be engraved on it. And it's our expectation that we'll have that and an accompanying certificate available for families on or before the memorial service that's later in October.
Q: Can you provide us for the record the number of Purple Hearts that you are at least at this point processing for the people in uniform?
Abell: I'll ask the question and ask Ms. Clarke's folks to try and get that to you.
Q: Thank you.
Q: Can I ask one more question please? Has there ever been anything like this historically throughout history? Have defense civilians just been ignored in this process if they were wounded or hurt or killed?
Abell: Well, as many of you know and as you've heard many times, I think this is a unique situation, and there's -- in the research that I and my team have done, I have not found any precedent for this before. There have been discussions before that we should look into something like this, and now we have completed that.
Q: Charlie, this is only for DoD civilian employees. There were civilian contractors here who were doing work for the Department of Defense who were also -- would they be eligible for this medal?
Abell: The criteria for the medal would allow the secretary to, on a case-by-case basis, award it to non-DoD civilians who were performing duty in direct support of the Department of Defense. So yes he could and we're considering those on a case-by-case basis right now.
Q: The Army's Institute of Heraldry usually designs this. Did they do that -- did they design this medal? And have they done this since September 11th?
Abell: The answer is yes to both. They provided us a number of options. We talked back and forth. And I would like to give them great credit for designing both the medal and the ribbon. And yes, all of this work has been done since September 11th.
Q: And do you have a notion of how many people were not here at the Pentagon who might be eligible for that, either in the airplanes or in the World Trade Center? Do you have any ballpark on either of those?
Abell: It's relatively small. I don't know if I -- the numbers I have don't break that out.
I'm sorry.
Q: If those men -- (off mike) -- men who died in the Pennsylvania airliner, took it over and -- (off mike) -- if they were vets, would they be eligible for a Purple Heart?
Abell: No. Purple Heart is for people serving in the military on active duty, not -- it doesn't apply to veterans.
Q: But this medal --
Abell: This medal is for Department of Defense civilians and those others who were on duty in support of the Department of Defense. So if one of those brave people happened to be a Department of Defense civilian or a contractor who was en route as part of a supporting activity of the Department of Defense, then he or she might qualify, but not just by virtue of their courageous activity.
Q: Does the 90 figure you gave us include only people that were injured or killed inside this building?
Abell: No, it's my understanding of Department of Defense civilians without regard to their place at the time.
Q: Can we also ask you for the record to provide, if you have -- estimates of those that were either on the plane or in the World Trade Center, so we have some notion --
Abell: Yes, sir.
Q: Thank you.
Abell: Thank you.
Q: And the breakup (sic) between the killed and the injured?
Abell: We'll try to get that for you as well.
|
Source: U.S. Government Website |